If you want to have the edge over other professionals in this competitive job market learn to use Twitter to search for recruiters and you may be able to garner a few job interviews.

For those who don’t already know this, Twitter is an online social networking/microblogging service. It enables users to send/read 140-character text messages called tweets. There’s no fee to open a twitter account. Once you open an account, and are a registered user, you can read and post tweets. (It’s important to become a registered user because unregistered users cannot post tweets, they can only read them.)

Again, beyond just posting and reading tweets with family and friends, you can also use Twitter, in your job search, to contact recruiters directly, which could lead to a job interview. Here’s what I do: during my online job searching, I regularly review job boards. When answering a few advertisements, I note the names of the recruiters who post jobs on these boards.

Then, I gather the names of the recruiters, conduct a search on Twitter, and – guess what — I’ve found that they all have Twitter accounts! One recruiter even tweeted about hisjob posting on hisTwitter account. I replied to that tweet and sent a separate tweet to a second recruiter.

Within minutes, the first recruiter replied to my tweet with a message telling me he was reviewing résumés and that hisassistant would get back to me! Then, the secondrecruiter sent me an email to schedule an interview! So, with just two tweets, I not only got the attention of two recruiters, but I also snagged a job interview!

For more tips on ways to use Twitter to help with your job search, visit www.TweetMyJobs.com, a leading social/mobile recruitment and job distribution network that matches job seekers with employers.

TweetMyJobs Senior Vice President and Founder, Gary Zukowski, has some additional tips about how to use Twitter to help with job hunting, they include:

using your elevator pitch in your Twitter biography

making sure you have a professional avatar, i.e., profile photograph

customizing your background to provide more details about your qualifications

Armed with those tips, you can now get started marketing yourself via Twitter! Just remember, though, for your job search to be successful you must be clear about your expectations.

Please comment with any tips you have about using Twitter in your job search.

Robert Corio, Jr. is a contributor to the PSGCNJ Multi-Author Blog (MAB)/Newsletter. He is a Sales and Marketing Specialist specializing in Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Customer Relations. Please visit his website at robcoriojr.com and follow him on Twitter @Corio_Jr_Robert.